 Hey there. I'm Sandy Allnock. Welcome to my YouTube channel. It is cold outside and I just get back from walking the dogs. And today my painting kind of fits with that kind of weather because I decided to work on something that's a little bit post-fall, not quite winter yet. And I did it in two mediums. So for those of you who wanted to see what's the difference between gouache and watercolor in how you go through the process as well as what the end result is, this is for you. Let's get started and I'm going to go unbundle. In addition to talking about the difference between these two mediums, I also want to discuss the difference between linear and atmospheric perspective because I'm going to be painting in atmospheric perspective. If your eyes glaze over when I say the word perspective, then just breathe deep. You're going to be fine. Linear perspective is the one that drives everybody nuts is that road that goes into the distance and it just gets smaller and smaller as it moves away from you. And the scale of the trees in the distance is going to be different than the scale in the foreground. But atmospheric perspective is where you do that same thing with color and value. And that's really what I'm going to try to achieve here, getting those really light colors, desaturated colors in the distance and more saturated in the foreground. I'm going to be going back and forth between the two mediums and I'm just putting on the screen which medium I'm in in case you get lost because it's going to be a lot of back and forth. I want to do each step in each medium so we can compare how they work. And gouache is opaque watercolor. That means it's a little bit more like acrylic, but it's water soluble and it can be rewet over time. So, you know, if you start painting over top of something, it might lift color from underneath. For the background here, I've mixed ultramarine blue with a little bit of burnt sienna to dull it down and with white to lighten it. And as I was painting, I realized I hadn't gotten enough white in that highlight area. So, I've mixed in some more white. I'm just going to paint it right over top and it's going to mostly blend in. But I have so many trees and leaves and everything to put in here. I'm not worried about trying to get perfect blending. Some people will, but the shape of that highlight is just kind of an odd one, because it blends out to the left, it blends out toward the top, and then it turns into all of those that dark stuff at the bottom. And I wanted to have some of that blue color down at the bottom for a reflection because instead of having light coming through, I'm going to have water puddles. That's what I decided I wanted in my painting. Now, watercolor is a very different approach because now we need to leave the white. We can't paint white back in, so I'm leaving it by painting around that area, leaving it open. And I painted with a very light wash first of some cobalt blue with paints blue gray mixed in it, because I again wanted to cut that down just a little bit. I think I even had a bit of burnt sienna. Because burnt sienna just acts as the complement and starts to dull things down. Now, while it's still wet with the watercolor, I can drop in those trees that are in the distance. I can't do that in gouache, but I can do it here, and I can get that really soft look because it's still wet. I'm also going to throw in some greens because I can do that at this stage in the watercolor because there's all that mushy green stuff all over the place. And this is going to give me very soft blended edges on some of the trees. I can paint over them later and give them sharper definition, but at least in this first pass, I can get that really soft sort of watercolor feel by doing it wet in wet. And that's not something you can do in gouache. It also though, it feels a little out of control and to a lot of people when you paint like this, you're like, I have just made a mess of everything. Well, I'm going to prove to you that both mediums are a mess at some stage. And both also start to write themselves if you keep going. A lot of people quit before they get to the good part. Now I wanted to put those trees in the distance, but I had to actually paint them. And that means they're going to have a little bit of a harder edge to them. That's just the look of gouache. But if you use a really, really soft tone to paint those, it's not going to be overly obvious. It's going to be more subtle just because it's a very light value. But always remember that when you paint anything in gouache, the color is generally either going to darken or lighten. And with watercolor, it always just lightens. And with gouache, it's a matter of playing with it to see which colors are going to do which. And I've had, you know, some colors that look like they got darker, but it's really because they were on a lighter background or vice versa. So a lot of times I end up doing this kind of a stage, and then I have to paint over it because I got the value wrong. But in gouache, you have that freedom to keep going over it and changing it if you mess that up. Now returning to watercolor. Now that it's dry, I'm using my inlaid needle brush to start making some of those intermediate types of tree trunks. They're thinner. They have kind of smaller branches. And I'm using very wet paint because I know it's going to lighten. And I want them to be lightened. But I'm also doing it on dry paper. So I'm going to get sharp edges instead of all that soft stuff that I got in the far distance. And this brush is lovely at doing this. I know it's not always available. There are other versions of this needle brush that I have tried. And I have not found one that releases paint the same way as it does. And I'm sorry about that. I wish I wish I wish it was more ubiquitous out there. But you can try some of the others and see if you can get the same thing. It has a large belly to it, holds the paint, and then kind of lets it out along that needle tip. And it's wonderful for making branches and that sort of thing. So now I'm using thicker paint. And I can go right over this while it's wet because it's just kind of a mushy mid-range area. And it's a little bit thicker, but it's still going to dry lighter because I don't want this to be super dark. I'm going to add more darks over it. And I'm just adding more of the scrub that's going to be behind those big tree trunks on the left hand side. For the gouache, it is very different in its technique. If I want to start putting in those mid-range greens, I need to mix a mid-range green. I wanted a green that was going to be a mid-range green and more on the olive side. So I used one of my bright spring green colors and threw in a little bit of a warm yellow, which I talked about in my previous video, about how to desaturate and dull down some of those colors. And that's what I've done here. To darken it, I'm using some Ultramarine Blue. I tend not to go for a black to darken until I'm really ready for that. I try to do it with a color first because black will dull everything down and just make your whole painting look dead. So here I'm just adding more of those dark colors in the bottom so that I'm ready for the rest of the scrubby stuff when I get there in gouache. Back to watercolor, I'm using even thicker paint and I'm still using that needle brush because I want some interesting edges down here. What I envisioned for this pathway coming forward is instead of doing just a pathway that opens up and gets smaller in the distance, I wanted some water puddles in here because I wanted some reflections from those trees. And since I have the sky color painted in the section down below, all I have to do is leave those open and I automatically have a color that's going to match the sky up above, which it's going to be reflecting. Or I guess it's possibly fog there as opposed to true sky because there's more forest in that distance. But I'm just creating shapes. And the green color here that I used was some green appetite with a bit of transparent red oxide in it. Just a little bit of mishmash to try to create something that's going to feel darker. And then went to more transparent red oxide to make the ground feel a little more of that late fall, early winter, not yet snowing, but that's sort of a feel to it. Now when I come back to my gouache, I'm putting in all of these greens, but now I need to mix a brown color and then figure out how to get that in there. It's not going to mix by just dropping it in. So that means I can paint little land masses and little clumps of dead brown leaves, whatever those are. And I'm tossing that in, letting it mix with the green. So I have some green in the brown, but I'm also letting it mix with the colors that are on the paper. And then putting in some lighter colors, lighter values, so that I'll have some areas that will be a little bit brighter. And I can add more on top of that to brighten it. But here I'm just looking to get these whole areas masked in just chunks of them. So they're all kind of ready for all that detail that's going to go on top. Now back to the watercolor. And just so you know, these were not done in a sequence of like, I'm going to paint this step and gouache this step in watercolor. I did the whole gouache painting together and the whole watercolor painting together and just mixed the footage. So this paper is still wet from the last pass that I had done putting all that paint down. That means I can take this really thick pigment that I've mixed with some Pains Blue Gray to darken it, not black, but Pains Blue Gray. That means I can drop that into these wet areas and get soft blurred edges in some places and start really carving up some openings for all of the puddles that I'm going to create. Now back to the gouache. I needed to put those more mid-tony but dark mid-tony types of branches in. I had the really pale ones that are more in the distance, but I wanted to add even more. So now I'm adding in more of the darker pigment for some of these interior branches that are going to be behind those big trees in the front, just little by little building it up. Now I can't use my needle brush with gouache. It's just not fluid enough and if it was fluid enough, it would just be all watery and would not really work all that well. So I'm using just scumbling motions with the brush to just kind of move it around and dance it across the page to try to create the kinds of edges and plants and things that I want in here. And I knew that I was going to continue adding more layers, but I can just paint right over any of this if it doesn't work out. And I love that about gouache because I'm always like going back in to just fix a little thing here and a little thing there, add a little sparkle of light coming in from somewhere onto a branch and I have the freedom to do that. Watercolor not so much because once it's there I can't really undo it. I can cover it but I can't really undo things. So you can see the contrast that I've got going on that left side and now I want these trees to have that much contrast and more. So I'm using actual black for these tree trunks because they're very much in silhouette in the photograph and I need to anchor them into the land. They can't just sit on top like they are now and I will have to go back in and make them kind of feel like they're part of the grasses and things that are underneath of them so they don't look like they're just kind of telephone poles floating in space. And also notice that I'm not really worrying about trying to make every tree trunk straight. Tree trunks grow in all different kinds of little angles and they kind of get in each other's way so if you just make a whole bunch of very straight ones it won't often look natural but just a little bit of a sway to one or the other can sometimes make your painting look really normal and natural like what you would see in reality. So I'm back to that needle brush because I need to start adding in a little bit more. I'm adding in a few dark branches but I'm also going to be anchoring these trees and just kind of tucking in some darks right where they hit the grasses so that I have a little bit of bright that's kind of dividing some of those sections almost a little hillside going up to the right and left but I can break up some of these sections so that I have more detail down there in the bottom and the photograph has all kinds of very solidish types of shadows for the plants on this left side there's just not a whole lot showing it just got very dark and that's why there was more of that dark color on the left when I painted that background because I knew all that needed to just kind of go away so that that light was going to be the focus and now for these trees in the gouache painting I'm doing the same kind of thing black for the tree trunks themselves and if I wanted in gouache I can easily just go right over top of this if I decide I want more detail in them and put some light on the edges of them I could even do that once this black is dry just go over it and add some brown bark textures and that sort of thing but I didn't really go that way because I wanted these paintings to sort of feel like they were the same but different because you know you can't make them look exactly the same but I'm using even a big fat brush to scrub in some of these bigger areas because there's a lot of deep rich shadow in the reference photo and so now I'm going to use my big brush again using it on its side will give me a thinner line because I don't usually use these flat brushes when I'm doing watercolor but in gouache I use them a lot trying to figure out what the best uses of them is and you can either paint with them flat to the paper and make a wider tree trunk or use the side of it to make a skinnier one and still adding in all the same kinds of trees that I added in the watercolor version shout out to any of my new friends in Sam Earp's online oil painting school yes I signed up for oil painting lessons I am not painting in oils I am painting in gouache but I know the instructor his work I've seen him on Instagram I've seen him on YouTube and I like how he teaches and he also uses gouache and I knew I could talk him into doing more gouache video so he said he would we had a critique just this week and he he gave another nod to wanting to do more gouache like even my gouache painting that he critiqued which I will post over on my blog he even said that that inspires him to go get his gouache out so yay for that but it's been a lot of fun hanging out with oil painters and learning how they think in mixing colors because with watercolor I'm used to being able to drop one color into another to change the tone and just letting the colors mix on the paper with gouache you can't do that you have to mix the color specifically which is not a bad thing it's just a different thing and I need to train my brain to think that way when I get the gouache paint out and it's working it's I'm doing better than I thought I would so that's good but here I'm adding more detail with that inlaid liner brush into the shadows and the grasses and everything I've got my reflections in the puddles from the trees that are above them and there's in the photograph light coming through and hitting little patches of the grasses but I thought a bit of water was actually going to convey that better and it was going to be easier to paint in both mediums so there's that as well because you know I'm always up for what's going to work and what's going to be easiest and still have a really good look to it so this brush is making beautiful little grasses and adding a lot of detail into those areas that I just left as blobs so this is the final pass which means I'm able to just kind of put lots of detail in there on dry paper you can add some more branches in the top and at this point you can still use a thin wash if you want to add thinner branches that are going to get lighter or you can use a thicker mix that's going to stay darker and be more in the foreground but all of it is against everything that I've painted already in the background so I'm actually able to get that atmospheric perspective with many layers going from the far distance into the the close foreground and that's what atmospheric perspective is all about now it's not going to fix your linear perspective if you get the linear perspective on a path incorrect and your your path doesn't end up like getting smaller as it goes off into the distance then an atmospheric perspective won't fix it but it will actually help to convey it so that's a good thing now with the gouache trying to put all that scrubby detail in is not as easy since I can't use that inlaid liner brush wish I had one that would work for that but I did switch to a smaller brush the ones that I use are recommended by another guy that I love his videos James Gurney if you haven't watched his stuff if you're a gouache painter go check him out he's got this set of brushes that he's used for a long time and recommends and I got them and I thought they were pretty good the jack Richardson set it's got a bunch of different size brushes in it some flats and some rounds and this is one of the smallest ones there you can also use an even tinier brush but the good thing about gouache is that it's less expensive you don't have to have fancy brushes you know you don't need an inlaid liner brush because it won't work on gouache right so just figure out which brushes you do have that can create that so I'm going to add my reflections into the puddles and I love how the reflection just jumps from one puddle to the other and if your tree goes a little bit to the left as it's going up as it's planted in the ground then make it swing out to the left when you're making the reflection so it goes in the kind of that same reflected direction now here I wanted to add more puddles so I could do that since I am able to paint right over top so I painted some of that light blue so that I could add another puddle and put a little more reflection in because it looked weird to have just the one tree in a reflection so I just thought I'd add some more and then I needed a bit of lighter detail on top of some of the little little scrubby things little grasses because it just felt like everything was a little bit darker than I wanted I can do that with color I can add more of the burnt sienna in the mix here so I'm adding more that feels a bit more like leaves or mud but you can also do that in greens you can do that in all kinds of things to create more dimension more little details and plants in the painting itself so my two paintings are now finished they're very different in character but when you look at them from a distance they just look like they're two paintings of the same scene and when you get close is when you can see the difference between a soft blended look that you can get in that atmospheric perspective in watercolor versus a more graphic look that gouache will give you and it's all a matter of your preference and what you like as opposed to one is better than the other because I enjoy both of them quite a bit I hope this answered some of the questions you might have had about the differences between gouache and watercolor and if it didn't or if it raised new questions because that's always a thing then leave something in the comments down below I'll either answer you in a reply if I can do that in short form but you might be inspiring a new video topic so let me know what you want to know and I'll do what I can I will see you again next week next week is Black Friday and I will be here on Tuesday with a rather hilarious video okay I think I'm hilarious I hope you will too so please make an appointment to come on back on Tuesday and I will see you then and in the meantime get out there and create something every day and I will see you very very soon take care bye bye